Saturday, July 12, 2014

In the new Warehouse management solution shipped with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3, any movement of inventory in the warehouse would normally have a corresponding piece of work registered together with work lines detailing where the warehouse workers should pick the goods from and where they should put them.

Therefore, it is no surprise, that when you receive a purchase order (or any other inbound order, like a transfer or a return) through the new mobile device portal, work will be created to put away the goods into a storage location (or QA or whatever you set up in your location directives). The closest analogy for those who know the existing WMS II solution that I have is the pallet transports used in conjunction with arrival journals, where goods get physically registered at the inbound dock, and a pallet transport is created to move the pallet to the location found based on the put-away rules selected on the arrival journal line (Check picking/bulk locations). The new solution allows a much better level of control over all the warehouse operations.

What I want to talk about today is the cases where the created work is not satisfactory and needs to be modified / canceled.

There are three scenarios I would like to mention:

The put-away location needs to be changed, because the suggested location is unavailable or another location is simply preferable.

The put-away work needs to be canceled, where a decision about the put-away location will be taken later

The put-away work needs to be canceled, because the receipt was incorrect to start with

1. If the warehouse worker doing the put-away is an experienced user who is allowed to make on the spot decisions about modifying the suggested flow of inventory, he can override the put location, storing the goods away into a different location at the warehouse.

This is controlled by a policy on the setup of warehouse workers, accessible through Warehouse management \ Setup \ Work users \ Worker, as shown in the below screenshot:

Allow work user to override put location when executing work

2. Another way to achieve this would be to cancel the pending put-away work, ensuring that workers do not see it on their mobile devices as something they should execute now, and creating a manual movement to a location of choice when the decision where to move the goods is made. This would be a decision done by a receiving clerk / warehouse manager.

It could also be due to some extra paperwork or inspection being done on the items, where it's yet unclear if the system-selected put-away location is OK. (If it is, the warehouse manager could simply block the work until a decision is made, which would prevent workers from executing on it)

In order to cancel the work, simply press the "Cancel work" button on the Work details form (or corresponding list page). See a step-by-step walk-through below.

3. Now, sometimes, due to input errors or other factors, you would want to not only cancel work, but also make sure the goods are not physically at the warehouse either, reverting the entire receipt as if it never happened (you'll still have a trace of it happening). This could, for example, be useful if the receiving clerk was logged in to a different warehouse and accidentally received a purchase order to that warehouse instead of the one the user was actually at (Note: Not possible in RTM, need a corresponding hotfix installed).

This additional step of unregistering the items is controlled by a policy on the Warehouse management parameters, called "Unregister receipt when canceling work".

Warehouse policy - Unregister receipt when canceling work

Here is a step-by-step description of the cancel workflow:

Create a new purchase order for a WHS-enabled item to a WHS-enabled warehouse

Purchase order with one line for a WHS-enabled item to a WHS-enabled warehouse

Using the mobile device portal, register the receipt of the above purchase order (Hint: use a mobile device menu item with Mode = Work and Work creation process = Purchase order item receiving)

Purchase order receipt on Mobile Device Portal

View the inventory transactions for the above purchase order, and confirm that they are registered at the default receiving location at the selected warehouse (Note: It is the warehouse the user was logged in to when doing the PO receipt from the mobile device)

Purchase order inventory transaction with Receipt status = Registered

Open the created put-away work (Hint: You can navigate directly to the new piece of work from the purchase order details form, by clicking on Work details button in the Lines section), and click on Cancel work.

Canceling put-away work

Confirm that Work status of the work header and lines has changed to Canceled, and (depending on the above warehouse management policy) the purchase order line inventory transaction is back in Ordered receipt status.

Note: This policy is currently implemented only for Purchase orders and Transfer order receipts. It will not come into play when registering the receipt of a return order or any other inbound order types.

I would also be interested in hearing your scenarios, which require canceling put-away work, and the reasons behind them. So if you use this functionality for reasons other than described above, please leave a comment below.